Re: Proposal for license change

From: Date: Sun, 06 Apr 2014 21:57:41 +0000
Subject: Re: Proposal for license change
References: 1 2  Groups: php.internals 
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On 04/03/2014 03:59 PM, Sharon Levy wrote:

----- Original Message ----- From: "Johannes Schlüter" <[email protected]>
To: "Sharon Levy" <[email protected]>
Cc: "Pierre Joye" <[email protected]>; <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, April 03, 2014 3:42 AM
Subject: Re: [PHP-DEV] Proposal for license change



On Wed, 2014-04-02 at 14:06 -0700, Sharon Levy wrote:

Why does the PHP project continue to be without any kind of corporate
sponsorship in contrast to the opensource project Ubuntu which is backed by
Canonical?  If the PHP project were to have a company supporting it,
wouldn't it be better protected? And, with a company backing it wouldn't the
issue of acquiring a trademark then be feasible?


Now PHP has multiple companies supporting it. Aside from previously
mentioned Zend we have or had active contributors from industry giants
as IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Google or Facebook (certainly incomplete
list) and tons of smaller companies and individuals who actually use
PHP. All on the same level. Such even if some of the decide to not
support PHP anymore there are enough shoulders to keep it running.

Having a for-benefit corporation might give paid developers who are
focused and might add predictability but a) we partly have that, b) that
drives away contributors ("why should I give them my code for free if
they make benefits out of it?")

What could work is a non profit foundation (US 501(c) or German e.V.
like KDE or whatever) but then the question is: What, aside from
bureaucracy, is the *actual* benefit? Over the last ten ears I have been
involved that discussion came up multiple times but I've never seen a
good answer outweighing the trouble.

johannes




If the PHP project were to join a non-profit designed to promote opensource projects, offering services like trademark registration and enforcement, would such an action clash with keeping PHP free and open? Apparently, more than 30 other opensource projects have taken this route, although I have yet to learn how well each are thriving.


We had this discussion years ago in the Drupal community; we ended up creating a non-profit (first in Belgium, then supplanted by a US 501c3) that acts as a steward and support structure for the community but NOT the code.  Copyright for Drupal code is all held by individual contributors (and GPLv2+ licensed).  The Drupal Association (DA) is empowered to provide legal support for Drupal (eg, if we ever did have a situation where we needed to sue someone over copyright violation or vice versa) then the DA would take that role, but it doesn't direct development.  It also owns/runs Drupal.org, manages the periodic DrupalCon conferences, and provides limited logistical and financial support to local community events like meetups and camps.

There's thousands of companies involved in Drupal, either as users, vendors, contributors, or all of the above, ranging from one-man shops to several hundred people.  Like any NFP the DA's ability to execute comes down to the ability of its leadership, particularly is Executive Director.  I'm happy to say our current ED, Holly Ross, kicks ass.

The Drupal trademark, though, is held entirely by project lead Dries Buytaert.  There's been discussion from time to time of transferring it to the DA but not much has come of it.

I know it's not a direct correlation to how PHP works, but I mention it as an example of a grassroots open source project that did setup a coordinating legal entity without it being a "company that takes over all the things" as many fear.  There are also umbrella organizations that provide "non-profit-in-a-box" for OSS projects.

If anyone is serious about investigating the options here I would recommend talking to the Software Freedom Law Center (http://www.softwarefreedom.org/).  They were very helpful to Drupal in getting the legal side rolling and also run such an umbrella, the Software Freedom Conservancy (http://sfconservancy.org/).  A number of significant projects, of various licenses, work through the SFC to handle their legal paperwork: http://sfconservancy.org/members/current/

--Larry Garfield

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